Gospel Story Finder

First of all, Shawn Bradley is tall.
Not just the ordinary, over-six-feet, hard-to-find-trousers-long-enough kind of tall.
Shawn is the duck-through-doorways, watch-out-for-light-fixtures, can’t-fit-in-some-cars, look-over-the-heads-of-everyone-in-a-crowd kind of tall. He is literally the tallest person most people will see in their lifetime. His height simply astounds people.
But Shawn Bradley is more than a seven-foot-six freshman college basketball player. His honest concern for others and wonderful attitude about life hint at depths that match his amazing size. But first of all, before anyone can come to understand that inner person, there is Shawn’s height.
“I intimidate people,” Shawn says half apologetically, “just because I’m so big. It’s hilarious what some people do. It’s crazy.”
“Yeah,” says Justin, Shawn’s six-foot-two, 13-year-old brother, “when we see another seven-foot guy, we don’t think he’s so tall.”
Sitting in the front room of his parents’ home, Shawn doesn’t seem extraordinarily tall while slouching in a comfortable chair. But as soon as he stands up, the room’s normal eight-foot ceilings shrink. The doorways cause problems when Shawn forgets to duck. He and Justin sometimes get roughhousing together as brothers will do, “When I get chasing him around, once in a while I’ll forget,” says Shawn. “Then, wham! I’m flat on the floor. It knocks me silly.”
Teresa, Shawn’s mother, lists a few other adjustments they have had to make at home. “We had to extend our mirror up in the bathroom so Shawn can see. We’ve had to order him an eight-foot bed.”
Friends and family are completely used to Shawn’s height, but they find it entertaining to go places with him and notice other people’s reactions.
“My family treats me horribly when we go to the mall,” Shawn says, in mock complaint. Justin and sisters Tasha, 15, and Adrianne, 9, just smile because they know what he is going to say next. “We’ll all be walking together, my family and friends, and I’ll look around and no one will be there. I turn around, and they are about 20 or 30 feet behind me watching everyone look at me. I’ll say, ‘Thanks a lot, guys.’”
His sister Tasha adds, “You can’t believe the looks he gets.”
Doesn’t he get sick of it, never being able to go anywhere without causing a sensation?
“Sometimes he gets tired of it, but he loves it,” says Corinne Pugmire, one of Shawn’s best friends from high school. “He wouldn’t trade it for anything, and he’ll be the first one to tell you that.”
“I love being tall,” says Shawn. “I do get tired of people always looking at me and always saying things, but I try to represent myself in a good, upstanding manner for my faith and my family. I am what I am. I’m seven feet, six inches, and nothing is going to change that. I have to deal with it and live with it. My family and my coach have taught me to look positively at things. Make the best of the situation is a slogan I live by. Look for the best in everything. That’s what I’ve tried to do so far in my life, and that’s what I want to do the rest of my life.”
It’s the kind of attitude that would make anyone stand out in a crowd. Shawn gives a lot of credit for his positive outlook to his parents.
Teresa and Reiner met in a hospital. She was visiting a friend, and he was working his way through college as an orderly. When he walked into her friend’s hospital room, Teresa remembers thinking, “Boy, this guy is tall.” Standing six feet herself, she was aware of height. Reiner is six-foot-eight. “He remembered my phone number when I gave it to my friend and called me,” said Teresa. They were married a year later. It was while the couple was stationed in Germany, fulfilling an ROTC obligation in the army, that Shawn was born. After finishing his schooling as a medical technologist, Reiner moved his young family back to Teresa’s hometown of Castle Dale, Utah. They wanted a small-town atmosphere for their children.
“I wanted my children to become well rounded,” says Teresa. “I wanted them to participate in lots of different activities so that when the time came for them to choose what they wanted to be in life, they’d have a good background. It’s happening. My kids are involved in almost too much. We have animals, and they can sort of learn how to work doing chores.”
“No sort of about it,” Shawn interrupted. “We do chores. I like doing most chores, but the worst is in the middle of the winter when it’s snowing, and out in the corral it’s really yucky. The milk cow is wet and gross, and you have to go out and milk her at 6:00 in the morning when it’s ten below zero. It’s got to be the worst chore in the world.”
Shawn may have to face the cow in the freezing barn some mornings alone, but in everything else his family offers encouragement and love. “We were there behind him to support him,” says Reiner, “not to push him. I don’t think he ever felt pressure to play in any sport.”
Shawn loves to play baseball and was the second-string quarterback in football during junior high until he felt he couldn’t risk injury. He was on the high school golf team, although he’s quick to add that when they organized the eight-member team, only seven tried out. “They had to let me on.” He likes to horseback ride, rock climb, and water-ski with his friends.
“We knew quite early that Shawn would be good in basketball,” says Reiner. “I played ball with some men in the ward early mornings at the stake house. I asked Shawn if he would be interested in coming along. He went with me many mornings to the stake center and played with the adults when he was only eleven or twelve.”
Some time in his early teens, Shawn could beat his Dad in one-on-one. “I don’t remember when it happened. When Dad would win, it would make me feel bad, so the next time, he’d let me beat him. I never really knew when I could actually beat him.”
But Shawn is not quite so kind to his younger brother, Justin. Would he like to beat his older brother? Justin answers very quickly, “Yeah.”
Under his breath, Shawn mumbles, “It’s never going to happen. I’m not going to let him. When he beats me, he’ll know it.”
Of course, Shawn’s basketball prowess has not gone unnoticed. He has attracted national attention since he was in the ninth grade. College recruiters roamed around Castle Dale trying to persuade Shawn to consider going to their colleges.
But Shawn had one big requirement, and if schools would not agree, then there was no more discussion. Shawn told them that as soon as he turned 19 he would be taking two years off to serve a mission. That point was nonnegotiable. All the colleges that talked with Shawn agreed. His family supported Shawn’s decision as he selected a school. Teresa confesses to being delighted when her son chose to go to Brigham Young University, just about a two-hour drive from home.
As many prospective missionaries do, Shawn has thought about some of the places he may serve a mission. “I’ll go anywhere,” says Shawn, “but I hope I don’t go to Japan. We have a family friend who was six-foot-four who went to Japan and had an uncomfortable time. He said things there were built for short people.”
His mother adds, “We’re hoping he’ll go to a country that feeds missionaries really well so he can gain weight.”
And that brings up the subject of food. Shawn is too skinny for his height. He weighs 210 and is consciously working to put on weight. “I eat anything I can get my hands on,” Shawn explains. “It’s like a constant hunger. I can always eat.”
But serving a mission is more than living and eating in another place. It is teaching others about your deepest beliefs. Shawn has already had some experiences that have prepared him for teaching the gospel.
When Shawn was 15, he and a friend attended a prestigious national basketball camp with 120 of the best high school players in the United States. A new friend talking with the two Utah players had some pretty wild misconceptions about Mormons.
“He asked me, ‘There are Mormons where you’re from, right? Do you see them? Do you live by them?’
“I answered him,” says Shawn. “Yeah, we go to school with them. We see them all the time. Mormons are like you and me. They are normal people. They look like us. They dress like us. They act like us. They talk like us.
“He didn’t believe me until I said, ‘I can prove to you that Mormons are just normal people.’ He said, ‘How?’ I said, ‘We’re both Mormons.’ It really shook him up. A few days later, that kid started asking more about the Church and our ideals. He couldn’t believe we wouldn’t have sex until after we were married, and that we wouldn’t drink and stuff. It was a heavy-duty discussion for 15-year-olds.
“I ended up bearing my testimony to him. That is the best missionary tool in the world. I just couldn’t find a way of explaining everything I knew. But I knew it was true. It was an excellent feeling to know something is really true.”
Shawn finds himself more and more often talking about the Church. Besides his television interviews with national press, he spends time speaking at firesides. His friend, Corinne Pugmire, says people can sense his testimony. “When he speaks, you can tell that he is not making it up to impress people. He definitely has a strong testimony. He’s adamant about standing up for what he believes and not backing down one bit.”
Friends mean a lot to Shawn. He wants to be able to trust everybody, but he’s already met people who just want to take advantage of him. “Deep down I can sense their motives. I can tell when people want to know me for what I am, not who I am. I think it’s the Holy Ghost saying, be careful.”
“People ask, is he stuck up?” says Corinne. “He’s not at all. He’s down to earth. He’s always quick to say he’s sorry if he does something wrong. He’s totally cool.”
In his ward, Shawn’s bishop, Scott Johansen, says, “He’s just one of the guys. He’s quiet, friendly, and very considerate of others. He goes out of his way to cheer someone up. He would be an outstanding young man if he were five-foot-eleven.”
When asked to think about someone Shawn has helped, his friend Bill Wright thought for a fraction of a second before answering, “He’s helped me. He’s incredibly caring. He puts everybody ahead of himself. My mother died two years ago, and he was the only one of my friends who came to her funeral. That has stuck with me. He was so caring and thought about me so much.”
Then with a touch of amazement in his voice, Bill said, “I have a hard time even believing he’s my good friend because he is such an awesome friend.”
When asked what advice Shawn would give to young people, he said, “It bugs me when people don’t think well of themselves. They need to have high self-esteem. If I had advice for anyone anywhere, it would be that you have got to think of yourself as the Lord would think of you, as one of his children.” Maybe that’s part of Shawn’s secret, why he treats people with such kindness and courtesy.
And his ability to see the good side to things has something to do with his favorite scripture, 2 Nephi 2:11. [2 Ne. 2:11] “That’s the one that talks about opposition in all things,” says Shawn. “If something goes wrong, I say, well, there is opposition in all things. This is the opposition. You have to put it aside and go on.”
Shawn has learned how to take gospel truths into his life and let them guide his actions and decisions. It is in this way he continues to grow.
Yes, Shawn Bradley is tall, and he is definitely someone to look up to.

My angel mother, Jasmine Bennion Arnold, clearly understood her role to help in the rescue of our Heavenly Father’s wounded or lost sheep, including her own children and grandchildren. What a marvelous role grandparents can play in the lives of their grandchildren.

Mom was usually assigned to visit teach those struggling with their faith, the less-active and part-member families; however, her flock included several others that no one had assigned her to visit. Generally her visits were not just once a month, as she quietly listened, ministered to the sick, and gave loving encouragement. The last several months of Mom’s life, she was homebound, so she spent hours writing them letters, expressing her love, bearing her testimony, and lifting those who came to visit.

“Are you the one who has been calling my daughter each week?” was the question.
The answer, from Keri Peterson of the Bountiful 29th Ward, Bountiful Utah Central Stake, was simple and direct, “Yes, I’m a captain of ten, and your daughter is on my team.”
“Thank you,” was the response from a grateful father. “Thank you very much.”
The youth of this Bountiful ward were involved in a project called Moroni’s Promise. It came in response to a challenge from Elder M. Russell Ballard given to the youth of the Bountiful 29th Ward to adopt a meaningful and significant project for the year. This challenge was brought before the bishop’s youth committee for discussion. The youth leaders decided that reading the Book of Mormon would surely be a meaningful and significant project.
One Sunday evening, all of the youth and their parents were invited to a meeting to launch Moroni’s Promise. It was the young, valiant captains of ten who gave the vision, reviewed the promise (see Moro. 10:3–5), spoke of agency and obedience, explained the program, and called for volunteers to join one of their teams.
One young captain of ten, Michelle Gardner, referred to the promise made by President Gordon B. Hinkley to all the members of the Church who read the Book of Mormon. He promised those who read daily that “there will come into your lives and into your homes an added measure of the Spirit of the Lord, a strengthened resolution to walk in obedience to his commandments, and a stronger testimony of the living reality of the Son of God” (Ensign, Nov. 1979, p. 9).
Appealing to the youth for whom she now felt a keen sense of responsibility, she added her own personal testimony. “I know when I read each day, especially when I study and don’t just skim over what I’m reading, I do feel a greater desire to live the commandments and to have the Spirit of the Lord in my life.”
Individualized packets were provided which included the quote from Moroni printed on parchment ready for framing, a system for recording progress, recommended target dates, helpful study methods, a promise of celebration stations, and a letter to be sent to a trusted friend or relative requesting support and continuous encouragement during the coming months as they read the Book of Mormon. An application form was also provided requesting the parent’s signature as well as the signature of a member of the bishopric.
Each participant was invited to add his or her own signature as an indication of willingness to be diligent in endeavoring to reach the goal of having read the entire Book of Mormon within the set time limit. This could be accomplished by reading approximately 16 pages per week. A captain of ten also signed the application indicating a willingness to be in touch each week to determine progress and provide encouragement to each member of his or her team.
Individual progress was not a public matter. However, increased interest was awakened when the aggregate “scores” of the teams were recorded on an attractive chart that was periodically displayed in the chapel foyer with pictures of various activities.
As eager participants finished the last verse of Alma 63, “And thus ended the account of Alma,” they would rush, regardless of the hour, to Sister Bonnie Guthrie, who helped with the records, assisted in making calls for captains as needed, and dispensed T-shirts to each one finishing the book of Alma. The T-shirts with “STOMP” (for “Students Trying Out Moroni’s Promise”) printed in bold letters across the front provided the incentive that urged many through the pages of Alma.
A celebration station was an event scheduled at regular intervals along the way to give strong incentives and provide continuous encouragement to the captains, who in turn, inspired their team members as they made their weekly contacts. The captains were to then give an accounting to the specialist in a brief weekly meeting following sacrament meeting. Many, many extra calls at various times were required to accomplish this necessary follow-up.
As the group completed Alma, a celebration station was scheduled. The snow had been falling all night, and it was unseasonably cold, but nothing would daunt the plans for the scheduled tree planting celebration. A flowering cherry tree had been selected. The hole was dug, and all ward members were invited to gather at the church.
Robert Davis stood before the group holding a scroll containing all the names of those who at that time had finished reading Alma. He rolled the scroll, put it in a plastic-coated container, sealed it, and then respectfully placed it in the hole at the base of the tree and explained, “You’re probably wondering why we are planting a tree. If you will recall in Alma the planting of a seed which became a tree has meaning because of the analogy to a growing testimony.” He then read Alma 32:27–41, “But if ye will nourish the word, yea, nourish the tree as it beginneth to grow, by your faith with great diligence, and with patience, looking forward to the fruit thereof, it shall take root; and behold it shall be a tree springing up unto everlasting life.”
On Mother’s Day following sacrament meeting, the entire ward was invited to gather around the flagpole for yet another celebration station. Richard Newman and Mike Bettilyon, both captains of ten, unfolded the beautifully designed flag with the large dark blue letters “Moroni’s Promise” centered in a white open field.
There were other names on that flag also. Those who had finished the Book of Helaman had added their signatures to the flag as an official Mother’s Day record. Bishop Bradford reminded everyone of the stripling warriors who did not fear death for they had been taught by their mothers that if they did not doubt, God would deliver them (see Alma 56:47). The captains attached the flag and pulled the ropes raising it to the very top of the long silver pole. Hearts were opened and feelings were tender as expressed by a younger member of the group, who whispering to a friend close by, said, “My name is on that flag,” and his friend responded reverently, “So is mine.”
By now the flowering cherry tree planted earlier was bursting into bloom nearby as a reminder of growing testimonies.
What difference has all this effort made? There have been 120 readers, 38 adults and 82 youth, participating in Moroni’s Promise.
Thirteen-year-old Wid Covey, standing before an audience, volunteered his testimony, “I’m thankful for this Moroni’s Promise program because it helps me understand the scriptures. When I sit down with my dad to read the Book of Mormon he helps me understand about it also. I’m thankful for Michelle Gardner. She calls me every week, and it helps me a lot and she encourages me.”
Sister Margaret Kirkham reported, “Our whole family looks forward to Richard Newman, our captain of ten, coming to encourage us. This project has been a great influence to our entire family.”
Bishop Bradford reflected on the past eight months. “It has made a great difference. There are few activities that could have unified our youth as well as this. I can’t say that all our youth now have a strong personal testimony of the Book of Mormon, but it’s a super beginning. With the help of our inspired specialist, a great number of young people will be better missionaries in every aspect of their lives, and all of them are better prepared to withstand the evils of the world.”

Elder Anderson returned from the mission field in May 1914. It didn’t take long for him to find a new companion. Norma Ettie Peterson was the daughter of Hugo D. E. Peterson, editor of a Salt Lake newspaper for Swedish immigrants, the Utah Posten. “She was blonde and I was dark, and I thought she was the prettiest girl in the city,” says Elder Anderson, who courted her, swimming and dancing, at the old Saltair resort near the Great Salt Lake. They were married 11 November 1915, in the Salt Lake Temple. Salt Lakers were impressed by the striking couple: Norma Anderson, with her brilliant platinum-blond hair and dark eyes; and Joseph, his handsome black mustache reminding people, much to his delight, of British movie star Ronald Colman.

Now, I should like to read portions of a letter that came to my desk. I have changed the names to preserve anonymity and have somewhat abbreviated it, paraphrasing a few words in the process. The letter reads:
“Dear President Hinckley,
“When I met you in the elevator at the hospital I had the urge to write you and tell you of some of the things that have happened to me.
“When I was sixteen or seventeen I cared nothing for the Church and would not have anything to do with it. But a bishop who was concerned about me came over to see me and asked me to help build some scenery for a road show production, and of course I told him no.
“Well, about ten days went by, and the bishop came back to ask me to build the scenery, and again I told him no. But then he went on to explain that he had asked others, and they had told him that they didn’t know how. He indicated that I was needed. I finally gave in and proceeded to build the scenery.
“When I got it done, I said, ‘There is your scenery,’ and decided I had done my part. But the bishop insisted that they needed me on the stage to move the scenery and make sure it got put up right and that it got moved carefully as the road show moved from ward to ward. So I finally gave in again.
“That bishop kept me busy for quite a while, and pretty soon I was involved and enjoying it. He then moved from our area and we got a new bishop, and he picked up the challenge and kept after me.
“Bishop Smith had asked me to go on a mission, but I was undecided on that, and when Bishop Sorensen was put in, he asked me also, and I finally decided that I would go.
“Well, the bishop and I went to tell Mom and Dad about my decision. They told the bishop they couldn’t pay for it. Dad told the bishop that if I was really sincere about going that I should work and save, and pay for the mission myself.
“My eyesight was not the greatest, as you know, and when I went places I had to be taken. When I became sixteen, I wanted to drive a car more than anything, and Dad took me to several eye doctors, all with the same result. The vision in my right eye was 20/800, and the vision in my left eye was 20/50, and I had astigmatism. So earning enough money to go on a mission was not an easy task. I worked in the sign shop at a department store for six to eight months to save some money. The bishop finally felt it was time for me to go, and we went to talk to my parents again. I had a thousand dollars saved, and the bishop told my Dad that the elders quorum would support me for the rest. Dad sat there for a while and said if anybody was going to support his son, he would. I filled out my papers and got my call in May of 1961.
“I went to Japan, where I loved the people and the missionary experiences that I had there. My companions and I baptized several people into the Church. After I came home, I went to work again in the sign shop. During the time I worked there, whenever I went to lunch, I would see a young lady walking up the street, who evidently worked in the same general area. I knew I had met her somewhere before but could not place her.
“Well, one of my missionary companions came home, and after some time we ran around together. Of course, he did all the chauffeuring because of my eyesight. One night he called and wanted to go out on a date, and so I frantically called around to find a date. Well, we went to a party, and guess who he took out. Right, he took out Sister Marilyn Jones who also had been in Japan, and whom I now remembered meeting briefly there on one occasion. She was the girl I had been passing on the street for several months and had not recognized.
“After this party, I went to California with my family for two weeks, and when I got home I found that my missionary friend had been dating the girl I had taken to the party. I thought I’d fix him, so I called Marilyn to go out on a date. You have to realize that it’s not easy to do that when you don’t drive, so my younger sister drove, and we had eight other youngsters accompany us to a ball game. That should have been enough to discourage any young lady from ever dating me again, but I tried again when my family went to the canyon to pick chokecherries.
“Finally came our date alone, and Dad had to drive me to pick up Marilyn, and then we drove him home, and went out on our date, and then back to our house to pick up Dad, who drove us back to her house, and then we went home. On the next date I asked her to marry me, and she told me no. Well, I went out with her some more, and asked her to marry me a couple more times, and I finally got a maybe. I thought that was a step in the right direction, and persisted. Six months after we started going together you performed our marriage in the Salt Lake Temple.
“President Hinckley, I thought that I loved this young lady at that time, but seventeen years later I find that I love her more than I could ever imagine. We now have five wonderful children.
“I have held many positions in the Church: chorister, senior Aaronic adviser, everything in the elders quorum, assistant ward clerk, seventies president, executive secretary, and now I am a counselor in the bishopric.
“I am still working in the sign shop at the department store. I bought a small house about thirteen years ago, and as my family got larger, my house got smaller. I had to do something, so I added on to my house and made it twice the size. I started this a little over three years ago and have been working on it ever since. It is coming along really well.
“Now for the most amazing piece of news ever. Two years ago in June, I went to a new eye doctor who examined my eyes and asked me what restrictions I had on my driver’s license. I told him that I didn’t have a license. He said that my eyesight was probably acceptable.
“I sat there in shock, and my wife said, ‘Does this mean he could get a driver’s license?’ The doctor said, ‘I don’t see why not.’ The next day my wife had me signed up for a driver education course, and after I finished it I went to get my license and they checked my eyes. The doctor had written a note explaining my eye problem, and that maybe I should not drive at night. The examiner put the letters up and I read them right off. He went to talk to his supervisor, and came back and approved my license with only a minor restriction.
“President Hinckley, the Lord has blessed me more than I can ever deserve. People say how lucky I am that my eyes have improved so much, but I know that it is the Lord’s doing. I feel it is because I have tried to serve the Lord and do what I can to build up his kingdom here on the earth. I am sure there are times he is disappointed in me, and I’m sure he should be. But I will try to do my best and be worthy of his blessings upon me and my family.”
He concludes with appreciation and testimony and signs his name. I have taken your time to read this somewhat lengthy letter because I feel it tells so simply and yet so eloquently what this work is all about.
If you will recall what I have just read, this man, when he was a boy of sixteen or seventeen, was drifting aimlessly and dangerously as so many young men do at that age. He was walking the broad way which leads to destruction. Noting the course he was taking, his bishop, a prayerful and dedicated man, recognized his creative talent as an artist and found a way to challenge him to use that talent in the service of the Church. That bishop was wise enough to know that most young men will respond to a challenge when they know they are needed. No one else in the ward was quite capable of building the kind of scenery the bishop wanted. This inactive boy was capable of this, and the bishop complimented and challenged him with a request that his service was needed.
Here is a great key to reactivation of many of those who have fallen by the wayside. Each has a talent that can be employed. It is the task of leaders to match those talents with needs, and then to offer a challenge. The boy of this letter, whom I shall call Jack, responded, and he soon found himself moving in the direction of the Church rather than away from it.
Then came the challenge to go on a mission. Jack, who was now accustomed to saying yes rather than no, responded affirmatively. The father was not fully converted, and responded that his son would have to earn his own funds. That was not all bad. There was something of good in the requirement that he develop self-reliance. He went to work, he provided much of what he needed, he saved his money, and when he had a thousand dollars, the bishop, again under inspiration, felt the time had come when he should go. Jack’s brethren in the elders quorum would assist, and that is proper. But the father, with an awakened sense of pride and of responsibility toward his own son, rose to the occasion, as men usually do when properly confronted.
I first met Jack in Japan when he was serving as a missionary there. I interviewed him on two or three occasions. That was before we had the Language Training Mission. Young men and women were then sent with no language training and simply plunged in to work at the task when they arrived there. I marveled that this young man, with serious eyesight deficiencies, was able to grasp that difficult language and speak it with power. Behind that was a great effort and a great sense of devotion, and above all, a certain humility and reliance on the Lord with anxious, prayerful pleadings for help.
I can tell you, for I witnessed it, that it was a miracle in his case as it was in the case of many others.
I also first met in Japan and interviewed on a number of occasions the young lady he was later to marry. She had a wonderful spirit, a deep faith, and a moving sense of duty. Their acquaintance in the field was nothing more than having seen one another on one occasion. They worked in widely separated areas. But out of their experiences had come a common touchstone—a new language in which each had learned to share testimony with others while laboring in the great and selfless cause of service to our Father’s children.
As he indicated in his letter, they asked me to perform their marriage. It was done in the Salt Lake Temple. Each knew that only in the Lord’s house under the authority of the holy priesthood could they be joined in marriage for time and for all eternity under a covenant which death could not break and time could not destroy. They wanted the very best for themselves; they would not be satisfied with anything else. Be it said to their credit that each has remained true to the sacred covenants they made in the house of the Lord.
Five beautiful and handsome children have graced that marriage. They are a family with love and appreciation and respect one for another. They have lived in a spirit of self-reliance. A small home which has been enlarged is a home in which father and mother and children gather together and counsel and learn one from another. It is a home in which there is a reading of the scripture. It is a home in which there is prayer: family prayer and individual prayer. It is a home in which service is taught and exemplified. It is a simple home; it is an unostentatious family. There is not much of wealth, but there is much of peace and goodness and love. The children who are growing up there are growing in “the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” (Eph. 6:4.) The father is faithful in his service to the Church. For these many years he has responded to every call made upon him. The mother likewise, in the organizations for women and children. They are good citizens of the community and the nation. They are at peace with their neighbors. They love the Lord. They love life. They love one another.
Now they have witnessed a miracle in the improvement of his eyesight. To a kind and gracious God goes the credit. This, too, is of the essence of the gospel, the power of healing and restoration, followed by acknowledgment and thanksgiving.
I do not know whether the two men who served as Jack’s bishops know what has become of him. If they know where he is, there must be sweet satisfaction in their hearts. There are thousands of bishops like them, who serve night and day in this great work of reactivation. And there are tens of thousands of Jacks in this Church whose hearts are touched and who are brought back into activity by a great sense of concern, a quiet expression of love, and a challenge to serve from bishops and others. But there are many, many more who need similar attention.

Yes, it’s true—a blind postman! His name was Owen Jones, and he delivered the mail for almost twenty-five years.
Owen was born in 1819 in a little village in Wales. When he was just a small boy, he fell into the fireplace, severely burning his face and losing the sight in one eye. When he was about thirty, he lost the sight in his other eye.
At first, he was discouraged and depressed, but before long, his natural, happy disposition returned. He continued to play the violin, and he worked at developing his talents for mimicking voices and telling stories. He learned to accept his blindness without bitterness, and, like many blind people, he developed his other senses.
When the missionaries came to Wales, he and his family were baptized and decided to go to America. He and his brother and sister arrived in New Orleans in 1849 on the ship Hartley. From there they made their way to Utah. Owen settled in Brigham City, a small community about sixty miles north of Salt Lake City, where there were other Welsh pioneers.
The neighbors found him cheerful, sociable, and friendly. He often did small repairs for them, and he made chair seats of rush (a course grass), cane, and rawhide.
He never had any trouble getting around the little town. He had an excellent sense of direction, counted the steps between fences and trees, and listened to the sounds around him.
When the job of postman became available, someone suggested that “Blind Man Jones,” as he was affectionately called, could do it. He was happy for the opportunity to be useful and to earn a steady paycheck.
He did well at his new job. Each day an associate sorted the mail for him and put it in the proper order in his canvas bag. Then away he went. Carrying a long buggy whip in front of him much like blind people nowadays use a white cane, he made his way around the town, delivering the mail. If he was not sure he had the right letters in his hand, he asked homeowners to check and resort them for him.
Owen took his meals with many of the townspeople; they all enjoyed his company and loved to hear stories about his early life in Wales. He spoke English almost as well as his native Welsh, and he was often called on to translate for immigrants who had not yet learned English.
Many children remembered having him in their homes for meals and parties. Owen loved to be a part of these happy times. Sometimes the carpet was rolled up, and the children danced to his violin music. He particularly enjoyed hearing the children’s laughter as they hopped and skipped to the music.
After one evening of dancing and merriment, the host asked his son to walk Owen home. After a block or so, he said to the boy, “You’d better go back; it must be very dark.”
“But what about you?”
“Oh, I can find my way without any trouble. Remember, the world looks the same to me whether it is night or day!”
The children always watched for him, and they took his hand and walked along with him, especially when he came to a small footbridge over a little creek. He probably would have had no trouble getting across, for the bridge had a railing, but he let the children feel that he really needed their help, and they loved it.
Owen never complained, and he never seemed to feel sorry for himself. He often said, “I would much rather lose my eyesight than my hearing. I can laugh and joke with friends, play the violin, and enjoy the music. I can hear the birds and the rushing streams and the other sounds of the world around me. Those are the things that give me joy!”
Owen Jones died of pneumonia in 1894 and was buried in the Brigham City Cemetery. He never married, but he enjoyed the love and affection of all the townspeople just the same as if he had been part of their families. He was an inspiration to all who knew him because he was willing to make the most of his abilities.
“It is not so bad to lose your sight,” he once said. “After all, what counts is what is in your mind!”
We could all learn a thing or two about living from Owen.

For one year, I taught English as a second language at the Universidad de Piura, in Piura, Peru. Piura was the headquarters city for the Peru Piura Mission.
The mission president, Chad Rowley, and his wife, Lisa, lived in my ward. They asked me to give English lessons to the missionaries serving in Piura. I accepted.
Using the Church’s English-language training program, I would meet with different groups of missionaries at the mission office to teach them English. It was a great spiritual experience for me to work with and get to know missionaries from South America and the United States. Weekday afternoons worked best because the city tended to be pretty quiet for missionary work until early evening.
Toward the end of my time in Piura, I was feeling homesick and worn out emotionally and professionally. One Friday afternoon, I was feeling particularly lethargic and depressed. I hoped the classes would be canceled because of missionary work, which took precedence over English lessons. That afternoon, however, that was not the case.
I left my apartment late and trudged to the mission office. As I walked through a park on the way, I prayed. I told Heavenly Father that I couldn’t endure one more minute, much less one more week. I was exhausted mentally and physically, and I needed His help.
I arrived at the mission office and went upstairs to wait for the missionaries. When they arrived for their lesson, I had no idea what to teach them. But to start, I asked one of the elders to say an opening prayer in English.
As the missionary began to pray, he said, “Please bless Sister Johnson.” Then he paused. When he continued, he added, “Please bless her to continue with the same strength as in the beginning.”
That missionary did not know I had prayed on my way to the mission office, and he certainly didn’t know what I had prayed about. But Heavenly Father did, and He answered that prayer by strengthening me.
There I was—a US citizen in Peru who was prayed for by name by a missionary from Bolivia. What a healing balm that afternoon at the mission office was. And what a powerful lesson I learned that day. No matter who or where we are—Heavenly Father hears and answers our spoken and unspoken prayers.

Dr. MacFarland also told about a World War II veteran who had heard him speak. This veteran sat down at his kitchen table and wrote a longhand letter to Dr. MacFarland. He wrote, “My wife and I don’t have much. I doubt we will ever have enough money to travel outside of Arizona. I was a soldier in World War II and was taken prisoner. For two years we didn’t hear one bit of news as to how the war was going. In all those months I never lost faith,” he said, “and then one morning I saw the American flag and a band of soldiers coming over the hill. I don’t know if anyone can understand the love I felt for my country that day, and have all of my life. I felt the same way the other night when I heard you talk.” Then he wrote, “Dr. MacFarland, you’re quite a guy. You just stay in there laying them on the landing deck.”

Many of us can relate to feelings of inadequacy, or that we of ourselves do not have a meaningful voice due to the consequences of personal choices that have not been in line with the commandments of the Lord. In my teens and early 20’s I found myself lost, inactive in the church, and putting my attention to things of the world that had little to no redeeming value. When I decided to return to full church activity in my late 20’s, I felt that I had strayed so far and lost so much that my offering did not have anything that could make any positive impact on anyone. I knew the Lord loved me, but I fashioned in my mind a love more of pity for a soul who would always be too broken to be of much value, one that needed to simply remain quiet, listen, and obey. But as Brother Brian Schow reminded us in his devotional address last week: “. . . the Savior has an expectation that we will use the gift of the Holy Ghost to do something.” In that season of change, I knew that I wanted to become a better man, and the Spirit whispered to me that if I were to do so, I would not be able to do so quietly.

Some years ago my father, who was an attorney, was trying a lawsuit. For his authority, he cited only one case--an old California Supreme Court case, issued many years before. His opponent cited a number of lower court decisions of much more recent vintage. The judge finally said to my father: "Mr. Callister, don't you have a more recent case than this?" My father looked at the judge and replied: "Your honor, may I remind you that when the Supreme Court speaks on a matter, it only needs to speak once." The judge nodded with approval. He was reminded that the Supreme Court trumps all lower court decisions, however numerous or recent they may be. So it is with God our Father--He only needs to speak once on the issue of morality, and that one declaration trumps all the opinions of the "lower courts," whether uttered by psychologists, counselors, politicians, friends, parents or would-be moralists of the day.

I recall a district, hours by jet from the nearest temple, where maintaining a current recommend was a high priority, despite the fact that it would likely never be used. The first Sunday of each month, leaders used their counting tools to account for their endowed members. If they found that a recommend was soon to expire, the executive secretary would schedule a renewal interview. People with expired recommends were counseled over, then sought out to assist them in returning to the covenant path. I asked how many of their endowed members had a current recommend. The answer was an astounding 98.6 percent. When asked about the six whose recommends had expired, the leaders were able to identify them by name and described to me the efforts being made to get them back!

All it took was a call to Gary’s Creek Missionary Baptist Church in Tennessee for Chris Collier to find the perfect Eagle Scout project.
Chris, a member of the Memphis First Ward, Memphis North Stake, says, a little nervously, “This is something that’s never been done before.” Gary’s Creek church asked him to document its cemetery—the oldest black cemetery in Shelby County.
Chris first needs to meet everyone involved and decide how much help he will need on the project. He drives to Gary’s Creek Cemetery on a road paved over the old stagecoach line. As soon as he steps out of the car, he has to swat at a mosquito. It’s the height of Tennessee heat in August, and it’s so humid you can practically drink the air. But that isn’t going to stop Chris.
There’s a group waiting for him at the gate to the cemetery. Mr. Lacy, who has many ancestors buried here, greets Chris. “This cemetery is a gold mine for genealogists,” Mr. Lacy tells Chris as he adjusts his wide-brimmed hat. “Think of all those people’s stories buried under the ground.” Mr. Lacy has uncovered the story of one of his ancestors buried here—Joseph H. Harris, better known as “Free Joe.” He wrote two books about Free Joe’s adventures and is turning them into a Hollywood screenplay.
Chris walks through the cemetery with his notebook and camera. The huge trees’ heavy branches droop in the heat, and thick emerald grass covers some of the grave markers completely. There are all types of people buried here, from tiny babies to Civil War veterans. Some of the markers are simple rusty spikes in the ground; others have hand-carved names in aged, chipped stones. Nobody can tell what they say, except for the caretaker, Mr. Brooks.
Mr. Brooks has been caretaker of Gary’s Creek Cemetery since 1939. He moves slowly around the cemetery with the help of his cane and quietly points out different grave markers to Chris. Mr. Brooks is the only one who knows the names on and locations of all the graves. His father was caretaker before him.
“I used to walk around the cemetery with my father while he helped me memorize the graves,” Mr. Brooks says. Many of the graves are unmarked, and the only documentation is in Mr. Brooks’s memory. If Mr. Brooks dies, the information dies with him. Chris isn’t going to let that happen.
Leslie Louthain, the director of the LDS family history center in the area, and her husband are also here to help. She gives Chris tips on how to put all the information in a database. He’ll give one copy to the Gary’s Creek church and send one to the Church’s Family History Library in Salt Lake City.
Sister Louthain thoughtfully examines a grave marker near the woods until she discovers there is more than family history in this cemetery.
“There are snakes in those trees!” she shrieks. Her husband laughs, and she heads for higher ground.
As Chris wraps up his first visit, he sighs. “I’m feeling a little overwhelmed. This one cemetery could be a lot of separate projects,” he says. But he isn’t afraid to plunge in anyway.
Chris doesn’t feel so overwhelmed when he comes back with a big group of teens to help him. The ladies from Gary’s Creek church provide lunch, and it isn’t as hot, because now it’s well into autumn.
Chris divides up the teens into groups to document the graves, with the help of Mr. Lacy and Mr. Brooks, of course. You can barely tell who belongs to which church because everyone is mixed together, trying to get all the information recorded.
As Chris wraps it all up, everyone is pleased. The members of Gary’s Creek church can rest easy, knowing the information in their vast cemetery has been preserved, and Chris’s group can be satisfied knowing they’ve helped preserve information for future family history work.
The cemetery seems a little more peaceful now, thanks to Chris, because the richness of its history won’t be lost. Who knows what stories might later be uncovered?
As Chris takes a reflective look around the cemetery, Mr. Lacy says, “Family history is going to be what brings religions and races together.” And in his little corner of Tennessee, Chris helped do just that.

Then, in 1966, he slipped while working and hit his head. Within seconds, Brother Bollbach lost sight in his left eye. “My world fell apart,” he says. “The darkness was awful.”
For a time, Brother Bollbach also lost sight of spiritual things. From the day he was baptized in 1921 in his native Germany, he had focused his life on the gospel. But after the accident, “I could not and did not want to pray,” he sadly recalls. “Even when my wife, Elli, continued to ask me to pray with her, I refused and bitterly asked, ‘Shall I thank God that I am blind?’”
He remained in spiritual darkness until one morning, about two weeks after the accident. Each morning before leaving for work, Elli had prayed alone—while Brother Bollbach stayed in bed. Then one morning after her prayer, as Sister Bollbach bent down to give Fritz a kiss, her tears fell on his face. He was moved by her tenderness. “When I heard her drive off, I knelt on my bed,” he says. “But I couldn’t pray.”
Brother Bollbach remained on his knees for several hours. He tried to speak again and again. But each time, something in him fought against his desire to pray. After much effort, he finally began praying to God again. “A feeling of thanksgiving filled my soul,” he recalls. “I remembered how many blessings I had and how many times Heavenly Father had protected my life. I was at peace.”
Since then, Brother Bollbach has used faith, prayer, obedience, and diligence to triumph over his challenges. “I could not see with my eyes, but God helped me see with my hands and with my heart,” he comments.
Before losing his sight, Brother Bollbach used his skills as a carpenter to build houses for German Latter-day Saints made homeless by World War II. He also helped construct Church meetinghouses. In 1956, the Bollbachs moved to Utah and seven years later became U.S. citizens.
In 1966, challenged with the loss of his sight, Brother Bollbach decided to expand his carpentry skills and to learn woodcarving. He also wanted to help others facing challenges similar to his own. “I made a goal to help the helpless and discouraged people,” he states. “I wanted to show that disabled people could still work and succeed.” A few weeks later, he registered at a school for the blind in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Gordon Clegg, supervisor at the school, says he has taught hundreds of blind people how to carve wood. But Fritz Bollbach, he says, had a special talent. “All I did was build his confidence,” Brother Clegg comments. “He was cautious at first about working with machinery, as most people would be if they were blind.”
Although it was dangerous, Brother Bollbach relied on his fingers to feel the shape and texture of the wood as he chiseled away. Even after breaking one piece of wood after another, he refused to give up. “After weeks of breaking wood, I finally finished a little chess piece,” Brother Bollbach remembers. “A month later, carving without sight, I made a chessboard and a chess table.” On his graduation day, he presented the chess set to the school. Brother Clegg then entered the set in a state fair competition. It won a first-place ribbon.
Brother Bollbach’s new skills gave him the confidence to start on his next goal—helping others like himself succeed. With the help of government funding, Brother Bollbach set up a workshop to teach woodcarving to people with visual impairments. He had many wonderful experiences in the workshop. One in particular stands out in his memory. It was two weeks before Christmas, and he was alone. Brother Bollbach was carving a special present for his wife—the model of an elk. He finished the elk’s body and thin legs with ease, but carving the eyes seemed impossible.
“I decided to stand up,” he says. “As I walked around the workshop, I began to sing my favorite hymn, ‘I Need Thee Every Hour.’ I prayed to God out loud for help, and again I sang.” After singing for more than an hour, Brother Bollbach picked up the knife and wood. But he still couldn’t carve the eyes. “What should I do? Shall I give up?” he asked himself. “No, Fritz, don’t give up. Try it again,” he told himself. However, he still could not hold the knife steady enough to carve the eyes. He stood up again and walked around for another hour.
“I sang, I cried, and I prayed for some time,” he recalls. “I thought of the many blessings the Lord had given me. I then took the knife again, and with my hands shaking, I carved the eyes and within minutes finished the whole head.”
Brother Bollbach says he no longer has problems carving. He proudly points to numerous figures he has made with his calloused yet gentle hands—various animals, chess sets, cabinets, and tables. “I often sat in my workshop early in the morning and late at night to carve,” he says. Only one year after he struggled to carve an elk, an art gallery in Salt Lake City featured his remarkably detailed work.
The Bollbachs extended a special invitation to Church President Harold B. Lee to visit the gallery. Instead, President Lee invited the Bollbachs to visit him at his office. Brother Bollbach fondly recalls the visit. He had created a wood carving of a wild horse jumping over a log to give to President Lee.
“We stood in his office,” Brother Bollbach remembers, “and after a short visit, he shook our hands. As I was leaving, he said to me, ‘I give you my blessing. Peace will be with you.’ I have never lost the peace President Lee promised me. I have always felt it in my heart to this day.”
That peace, won through years of hard work and persistence, reveals itself in Brother Bollbach’s deep-green eyes. Although his face shows the wrinkles of time and his big build has grown fragile from years of labor, his spirit remains strong. His testimony rests solidly on a foundation built by sacrifice and Church service.
Much of Brother Bollbach’s service has been as a missionary in the land of his birth. In 1969, six weeks after Fritz had opened the workshop, Fritz and Elli’s bishop called them into his office and asked them a question. The bishop had to repeat the question three times: “Fritz, the Lord wants you and your wife to serve together in the mission field. What do you think about that?”
“I was shocked,” Brother Bollbach remembers. “I could say nothing.”
Unable to answer the bishop’s question, he asked Elli, “Well, Mama, what do you think?”
She glanced at Fritz and said, “The decision is yours. I will be your eyes.”
He turned back to the bishop and replied, “Bishop, we will go where the Lord wants us to go.”
The Bollbachs were soon serving in the Germany Central Mission. Their main responsibility was to help bring people back to church. “Many of them did not want to pray because they said they had nothing to be grateful for or they just didn’t need anything,” Sister Bollbach explains. “However, Fritz inspired them and helped them to be grateful for life and for God’s blessings.”
One of his first assignments was to serve as branch president in Gelsenkirchen. At first Brother Bollbach was hesitant when the mission president called him to the position. “But you know that I’m blind,” Brother Bollbach told him.
“Yes, of course I know that,” the mission president replied. “God knows it as well.”
Brother Bollbach labored as branch president there until he had a mild heart attack a year later. “I wondered if I should go home after that,” he recalls. “But the doctor examined me and said it was all right for me to stay. So we stayed.”
After they returned from the mission field in 1971, Elli went back to working in the Salt Lake Temple, and Fritz reopened the workshop and put his wood pieces on display. As people flocked to see Brother Bollbach’s carvings, many thought it impossible that a blind man had done such splendid work. “Unbelievable, but not impossible,” he told them. “You must have faith in the Lord and confidence in yourself. All people—no matter what race or creed—are children of God and brought talents with them to earth. It depends upon the individual to discover and realize those talents through diligent effort.”
In 1975, the Bollbachs were surprised by another mission call, this time to the Germany Frankfurt Mission. About the same time, Elli discovered she had cancer. “No one can imagine the fear we felt,” Fritz explains. “Within one week, she underwent three operations. The curious thing was the blessing the bishop gave her. He said to her, ‘Elli, you will recover, and you will again go into the mission field with Fritz to serve God.’ We wondered how he could say such a thing.”
Sister Bollbach recuperated from the operations, and they served an eighteen-month mission in Pirmasens, Germany, near the French border.
Less than a year after returning home, the Bollbachs locked up their house and workshop a third time to serve in the Germany Munich Mission, where Brother Bollbach was called to be branch president in Nürnberg. Although the branch had more than 450 people on its records, only about 20 members attended regularly.
The Bollbachs knew they had challenges, but they also knew how to overcome them. With faith, prayer, obedience, and diligence, they concentrated on visiting less-active members. “A miracle happened,” Brother Bollbach exclaims. “The branch grew. Several months later, the branch was divided into three branches—Feucht, Fürth, and Nürnberg. I know it was the blessing and help of God. We were just the instruments in his hands.”
After coming home, the Bollbachs served as Sunday School teachers for about ten years. Because Fritz could not read the lessons, Elli recorded the lesson manual and passages of scripture onto a tape. Fritz would then listen to the tape several times and would study with Elli for up to eight hours. “I searched out the questions and had them put on tape,” he says. “Then I learned them by heart so we could teach the class together.” They finally were released when Brother Bollbach became too sick to continue the weekly assignment.
The Bollbachs say all their Church assignments have made them happy. “We used our time only for the Church and for God and for learning,” Brother Bollbach comments, “and we were glad. But it was not ourselves, but the power of prayer and the help of God that allowed us to do the work. Without God and Elli, I could not have made it. Without His help, I could not see spiritually with my heart.”

When he recalls the rigorous years he spent at Harvard Business School, Elder Robert D. Hales of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles says of his graduate program, “I was stretched to my capacity.”
About this time Elder Hales received a call to be elders quorum president. He was concerned about the added pressure such a call would create on his schedule. “It was one of the few times in my life I didn’t say yes on the spot,” he explains. “I went home to my wife and said, ‘I will probably fail in school if I accept this calling.’”
Sister Hales responded, “Bob, I would rather have an active priesthood holder than a man who holds a master’s degree from Harvard.” She then put her arms around him and added, “Together we will do both of them.”
They knelt in prayer and then went to work. The ensuing months were difficult, but they managed to “do both of them.”

Pray. When Chad, our new baby, started taking more and more of my wife’s time, I sensed a feeling of resentment. With Chad came new financial responsibilities, and the pressures on me mounted. Often I felt my wife did not understand me. The need to feel understood left me wanting to look outside our marriage for friendship and emotional support. Then I remembered the feeling I had when I took my sweet wife by the hand in the sealing room of the Boise Idaho Temple. There the Spirit of the Lord bore pure testimony to me of the sanctity of our marriage. I will never forget that moment.
I was asked once if we pray for a successful marriage. We do now. At the end of each day we kneel with our son and have family prayer. The gospel is full of tools to help a marriage. Having a strong relationship with our Heavenly Father has become the backbone of our marriage.—Scott A. Carlson

May I close with a story of inconvenience, now well known to you. Two weeks ago Air Florida’s Flight 90 to Tampa, a Boeing 737 with 74 passengers aboard, began rolling down the runway at Washington’s National Airport. Nothing seemed very different about this; hundreds of planes leave that airport every day. But you all know what happened next. The plane slammed into the 14th Street Bridge, smashed five cars and a truck, and then skidded into the ice-clogged river. To quote one source:

For a moment, there was silence, and then pandemonium. Commuters watched helplessly as the plane quickly sank. . . A few passengers bobbed to the surface; some clung numbly to pieces of debris while others screamed desperately for help. Scattered across the ice were pieces of green upholstery, twisted chunks of metal, luggage, a tennis racquet, a child’s shoe. . . .

Within minutes, sirens began to wail as fire trucks, ambulances and police cars rushed to the scene. A U.S. Park Police helicopter hovered overhead to pluck survivors out of the water. Six were clinging to the plane’s tail. Dangling a life preserving ring to them, the chopper began ferrying them to shore. One woman had injured her right arm, so [the] pilot . . . lowered the copter until its skids touched the water; his partner [then leaned out and] scooped her up in his arms. Then [a young woman] grabbed the preserver, but as she was being helped out of the . . . river by [a] fellow passenger . . . she lost her grip. . . . A clerk for the Congressional Budget Office who was watching from the shore, plunged into the water and dragged her to land. But the most notable act of heroism was performed by [another] of the passengers, a balding man in his early 50s. Each time the ring was lowered, he grabbed it and passed it along to a comrade; when the helicopter finally returned to pick him up, he had disappeared beneath the ice. [James Kelly, “We’re Not Going to Make It,” Time, 25 January 1982, pp. 16–17]

I quote from an essay entitled simply “The Man in the Water”:

His selflessness [is] one reason the story held national attention; his anonymity another. The fact that he [has gone] unidentified invests him with a universal character. For a while he was Every man, and thus proof (as if one needed it) that no man is ordinary.

Still, he could never have imagined such a capacity in himself. Only minutes before his character was tested, he was sitting in the ordinary plane among the ordinary passengers, dutifully listening to the stewardess telling him to fasten his seat belt and saying something about the “no smoking sign.” So our man relaxed with the others, some of whom would owe their lives to him. Perhaps he started to read, or to doze, or to regret some harsh remark made in the office that morning. Then suddenly he knew that the trip would not be ordinary. Like every other person on that flight, he was desperate to live, which makes his final act so stunning.

For at some moment in the water he must have realized that he would not live if he continued to hand over the rope and ring to others. He had to know it, no matter how gradual the effect of the cold. In his judgment he had no choice. When the helicopter took off with what was to be the last survivor, he watched everything in [his] world move away from him, and he deliberately let it [go]. . . .

The odd thing is that we do not . . . really believe that the man in the water lost his fight. . . . He could not, [like Nature], make ice storms, or freeze the water until it froze the blood. But he could hand life over to a stranger, and that is a power of nature too. The man in the water pitted himself against an implacable, impersonal enemy; he fought it with charity; and he [won]. [Roger Rosenblatt, Time, 25 January 1982, p. 86]

In this world we are all, you and I, the man or the woman in the water. We often, like this man and Hamlet, must “take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them” (Act 3, scene 1, ll. 59–60). And sometimes the cost is very high. It was for Christ, it was for Joseph Smith, and it was for this lone man who counted the cost there in the Potomac—and paid it.

To grow fruit there is a yearly challenge. After the fruit has blossomed, if it gets extremely cold, the blossoms will freeze, and the whole crop will be wiped out. Just as the fruit farmers relied on the Lord for rain, they also relied on the Lord to help them protect their crops. One time we had a long, hard cold spell that lasted night after night. Our stake president asked for a special fast that the elements would be tempered, and we were able to save our fruit.

The Holy Spirit has the power to guide. A 15-year-old girl felt that she needed to find new friends. She wrote to the Young Women office, “Now, I don’t know if you have ever had to change friends, but it honestly was the hardest thing I have ever had to do.” She decided to put her problem in the hands of the Lord, and she also counseled with her parents. She says that after several months “she wanted to just give up.”
One afternoon she was casually talking to her seminary teacher, and she confided her problem to him. Then he said, “I really don’t know why I am asking you this, but do you happen to know these girls?”
This girl answered with a yes. And then he said, “Have you ever thought about being friends with them?”
“I told him that there was no way that I could fit in with them. He then asked me if he could talk to one of the girls. I decided I would let him, if he promised not to embarrass me.
“Well, that next day I received a phone call from one of the girls. Now, you have to understand that this girl was on student council, and I hate to use the term, but she was ‘extremely popular.’ She asked if I would like to go to the basketball game with her that night. It was one of the funnest, most peaceful nights of my life. The next day at school, she introduced me to two other girls. We all instantly became friends.”
She concludes by saying, “I don’t know about you, but I would much rather have the Lord, who knows the outcome of everything, direct my life than me, who just sees things as they are at the time. He is right by our side, walking us through life, even when we feel so alone.”

When I was about 12, I was asked to sing a solo in my home ward. My parents encouraged me to memorize the hymn so that I could look out into the audience. I worked on the song for many weeks until I could sing it without looking at the words. When the Sunday arrived, I sat on the stand and felt my heart pounding. I had sung in other wards before, but I felt nervous singing in front of people I knew. My greatest fear was that I would make a mistake.
When it was time, I stood up and walked up to the microphone. I felt my stomach flip. I was too afraid to make eye contact with anyone, so I looked at the clock at the back instead. My accompanist began to play the introduction, and I started to sing. I made it halfway through the hymn without any difficulties when I looked down from the clock to the congregation. Suddenly, I forgot the words to the hymn. My accompanist continued playing for a few more measures until she figured out I had stopped singing. She went back to where I had left off and encouragingly played the melody, hoping to remind me of the words.
The words did not come. Fear began to rise within me. My face flushed with heat, and I could feel my ears turning red. My mind raced through the words of the hymn trying to remember what came next, but the words did not come. I looked out into the audience feeling humiliated and embarrassed. My heart crumpled with disappointment and embarrassment. I began to cry. Tears rolled down my cheeks, and I hung my head, burying my face in my hands. I felt everyone staring at me. I wasn’t sure whether I should sit down or stand there until I could remember the words.
Suddenly, I felt a firm hand on my shoulder. I looked up through teary eyes to see my bishop, Bishop Smith, smiling at me. He leaned down and told me that he would sing with me. He then nodded to the sister to begin playing. Bishop Smith’s beautiful baritone voice filled the chapel as he began to sing. He knew the words! As soon as he sang them, I remembered them as well. With his arm around my shoulder, I felt the courage to begin again, and together we finished the song.

May I share with you a personal experience? We had spent nearly four years in South America and returned just in time for our eldest son to enter Brigham Young University. Several months after school had begun we received a call—I think it was a collect call—and the conversation proceeded something like this:
“Hello, Dad?”
“Yes.”
“This is David.”
“Yes, what do you want now?”
“Oh, nothing.”
“Nothing! Well, why did you call then?”
“Oh, I just wanted to tell you about school. I love it. It’s great. I am glad to be here. I like the place where I live. I like my roommate. I like my professors and I like the spirit here.”
And I said, “Yes, but what do you need?”
“I don’t need anything.”
“Well, why did you call?”
“I just called to say ‘Thank you.’ I am grateful for your helping me to be here.”
Well, there was considerable silence on our end of the line and we muttered something about, “We’re glad you’re happy.” Later that night as his mother and I prayed, we thanked the Lord for a thankful son. The lesson, of course, came clear to me. I appreciate a son who says, “Thank you” for things that parents have done, as all parents do. But I am a son also. I have a Father in heaven, who, like me, appreciates a son or a daughter who frequently says, “Thank you.”